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“Please. Please. Let me say goodbye. You can observe if you must. I need to see her again.” She begged the agent in the black suit, alone now in the elevator. “It is one floor down, I will be quick. Rachel never has to know. Please?”
He remained still and silent, his lips forming a firm, unmoving line.
As the doors opened, they were joined by two other agents as he handed her over and walked briskly down the hall. She renewed her pleas as they each grabbed an elbow and led her toward the exit.
She started sobbing then, her shoulders rolling with the force of the realization that she may never see Cosima again.
"Please,” she said one last time as she gestured toward the restroom. “I need to … compose … myself.”
Unexpectedly, they complied. Each posting themselves by the door as she entered, grasping her phone.
She quickly sent off the message along with the schedule she’d pulled off the notepad of Rachel’s assistant. The procedures listed there represented a turning point – upping the ante in the dangerous game DYAD was playing.
War. Rachel was declaring war.
-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-
They held her for what she guessed must have been nearly a day at a location off-site, one she didn’t recognize. No information, no contact, finally taking her phone. She was given food and water with only the silent agents for company. Left alone to stew in raw emotion she felt numb and exhausted.
With no warning, the doors opened and four agents came in, gesturing for her to get up. They jostled her onto DYAD’s private jet, teary-eyed and pleading, and deposited her in the front row. They may have said they were there for protection, but their objective was clear - to keep her contained until they arrived wherever it is they were going.
Once she was finally on the plane, everything was on fire again. She leaned her back against the airplane window. Her eyes darted around the plane and hands twisted in on each other in the nervous, skittish gestures of an animal trapped. Her thoughts, too, were chaos.
She thought of the brunette, the beautiful woman she had hoped to make a life with, perhaps someday, after they found a cure, after they put the drama of DYAD behind them. She thought of what Cosima – and all of Clone Club – must think of her. Slinking off, pursuing a career over loyalty. A traitor, confirmed at last. Abandoning their sister.
I am abandoning her. When she needs me most.
She let out a loose sob, uncaring who heard.
She didn’t care, really, if they were taking her to a DYAD facility or a black site, to start a new project or to end her life. Somewhere deep she must have been frightened, but at the moment her mind was filled with worse fates. With the prospect that Cosima may not understand her message, may believe she could callously leave her now.
The thought that her love may take her last breath and never know how much she cared.
It broke her in ways she never thought she could break.
Her thoughts finally settled on that last email, the possibility they would be the last words between them. How meager and inconsequential they were. She hoped Cosima read her intentions in the vague wording, in Rachel’s leaked schedule.
Rachel. At the thought of the calculating, brutal woman – a woman that shared her lover’s face but was the opposite of her in every conceivable way – anger burned through her.
Such a simple emotion. Much easier to handle than the anguish and unknowns that came with thinking of Cosima, alone and fading.
If I do get off this plane alive, my mission is to make it back to Cosima. Whatever lies I must tell or alliances I must make. And if I have to take Rachel out to do so, all the better.
-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-
Her gaze lingered out the window, at a near-pitch sky and the clouds below, but she had already begun her plotting. The plans were full of gaping holes and dead-ends. But it gave her mind focus.
As they began their descent, her questions about their destination still unanswered, she strained to hear any hints from the cockpit. Finally, she heard air traffic control make contact, in German.
She was going to Frankfurt after all. But why had they held her, diverted her to the private jet?
As the steps were unfolded from the small jet, she saw the woman that was waiting for her. Tall and striking in all white against the black Suburban, flanked by nondescript agents, near-copies of the ones at her back.
The woman smiled and held out her hand.
“Welcome to Frankfurt, Dr. Cormier. We have a lot to discuss.”
She knew of Marion Bowles, of course, though she scarcely knew what the woman did. Her meetings with Aldous had been secretive and quick. But she was powerful. A glimmer of hope was starting to form, and Delphine only had a moment to wonder what deals she would have to make to get back to Toronto.
“Yes, Mrs. Bowles, I think we do.”